Stalk crops, such as sugarcane and the like, are required to be harvested and in most cases they are required to be cut into billets. The stalk crops are cut into billets by means of choppers which are appropriately positioned on a harvester. The choppers are provided with blades, having a cutting edge, appropriately positioned to chop the stalked crops.
However, with continuous usage, the cutting edge of the blades is worn out or gets chipped. The worn out blades are required to be changed in order to enable proper chopping of the stalk crop. Presently available blades used in chopping operations in the choppers include a plurality of elongated blades spanning the length of a chopper drum while being mounted at a predefined radial distance from each other. In case of wearing out of one of the blades, the chopping operation is adversely affected. Hence, the worn out blade is required to be replaced with a new blade having a sharpened cutting edge. Also, due to the length of each blade, the entire length of the cutting edge is not effectively utilized. This results in under-utilization of the blade while increasing the inoperative time of the harvester. This results in increasing overall operational cost of the harvester.
The present invention envisages addressing the problems associated with the presently available blades, while reducing the inoperative time resulting from replacement of blades and not utilizing the maximum length of the cutting edge of each of the blades.